


bright (lights/hearts/futures)

by PenzyRome



Category: Newsies (1992), Newsies - All Media Types, Newsies!: the Musical - Fierstein/Menken
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Established Relationship, F/F, Gift Exchange, M/M, Male-Female Friendship, Mutual Pining, Rated T for swearing, aaaand that's it this is just sweet holiday stuff, and have a lot of convos about their cultures and religions, kath and davey are besties, sarah and davey are in an admirable battle against capitalism and commercialization, they live in ca i do what i want, uhhhh fuckin. what happens in this fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-26
Updated: 2018-12-26
Packaged: 2019-09-28 04:34:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,151
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17175986
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PenzyRome/pseuds/PenzyRome
Summary: Katherine Plumber has been running a Secret Santa/Non-Commercially Affiliated Gift Exchange with her friends for six years, and only one thing could ever ruin it: Jack Kelly. (And of course, she's somehow convinced to let him back in.)





	bright (lights/hearts/futures)

**Author's Note:**

> yea uh. holidays are partially over but not completely!!! so i hope everyone had/is having/will have a splendid time!!!!! uhhhh anyways here take this idk if its good i wrote this in like three days

“Not in a million fucking years, Davey.”

“Come onnn,” he whined, kicking at Katherine’s leg under the table. “Give him another chance!”

“Three years, Davey! Three years, we all knew what we were getting because he couldn’t keep his mouth shut!”

Davey groaned, kicking her leg again. “But he gives the sweetest gifts!”

“They’re not _that_ great,” she said, and then tried to discreetly slip her copy of Emma under her purse.

Her copy, that Jack had hand-printed and made water-color illustrations for, bound himself, and pressed the cover of. Basically, a copy constructed from scratch, by Jack, for her.

So, maybe his gifts were great.

“That doesn’t change the fact,” she said, barreling through, “that you just want him back in so he can come to the party and you can further wreck my plans.”

Katherine, when it came to religion, wasn’t a fanatic. She was raised Protestant, and she converted in college to just… belief in the core values of Christianity, without delving far into the customs or traditions. But she considered herself a firmly Christian gay woman, and she was comfortable with that.

Sarah and Davey, who she loved very much but also who strictly contrasted her in nearly every way shape and form, were…. a bit more chaotic.

They both clearly treasured their history and culture, which Katherine respected deeply. Neither of them shied away from their heritage, and Davey in particular, for the most part, practiced the way he was raised. He went home for the holidays, he kept kosher, and Judaism was generally a large part of his life.

(He and Katherine saw eye-to-eye on that-- they both cared deeply about their faith. But they also had the tendency, as many best friends do, to, well, constantly mock each other. It never became hurtful, but Davey definitely had a field day after Katherine’s mother took Jack’s “eat mac and cheese and fight God” joke very seriously.)

And Katherine was grateful for Davey’s commitment to his faith. She’d never really learned about her grandfather’s culture until Davey, when he introduced her to Esther and Mayer, and the Jacobs family took turns explaining the traditions that Katherine hadn’t learned from her father.

Sarah, however, was… significantly less orderly. At nineteen, she had fallen in love with pork and never looked back. She kept coming up with excuses to conceal the fact that she could only remember roughly three words of the Torah. She used a Magic 8 Ball to decide whether or not she’d be going home.

But both of them, were, uh. Jack put it as “stalwart enemies of large corporations.” Katherine put it as “gremlins who liked to ruin a good Easter Sunday.” But however you put it, it was essentially a fact of life that wherever the Jacobs twins and a commercialized holiday coexisted, Katherine’s life turned into a video game that she hadn’t meant to turn up the difficulty of.

Every year, Sarah and Davey (well, mostly Davey, but since Sarah _was_ Katherine’s girlfriend, she had to give her credit,) threw their post-Hanukkah party, as a way to celebrate with their friends after celebrating with their family.

And then, the party-throwing duty was turned over to Katherine for Christmas. For Davey, party-planning was relatively simple, involving making decorations, cooking, and preparing gifts. For Katherine, the first few times she had tried it, it had involved trying to combine her “proper” Christian family with her… disorderly, to say the least, friends. The first Christmas Day party she tried to throw had been an utter disaster, and two of her brothers hadn’t spoken with her since.

And so, she had very early on had decreed a split. Christmas Day was for her family, Christmas Eve for her friends and tiny vodka bottles.

Christmas Eve was also the day of their Jacobs-Plumber-Conlon-Morris-not-Kelly Gift Exchange. They’d had it for six years straight, ever since freshman year of college, and Katherine could easily admit that it was something she held close to her heart.

It was the first thing they did each Eve, before anyone was past tipsy, and before Davey and Sarah kicked into their first anti-Black-Friday rant.

It had… varying levels of success.

Sarah gave average gifts, with a decent amount of thought put into them, but really thrived in cards. Not a single person had received a Sarah Jacobs card and not cried.

Crutchie gave gifts that no one knew that they wanted before they had. He was admittedly the reason that Katherine had so many tea sets-- he gave her one, and she became addicted.

Spot gave useless gift cards that seemed to have one sole purpose: to make fun of the person who received it. Davey, who was so lactose intolerant that restaurants could sense it on him, had ended up with a Coldstone Creamery card with a grand total of fifteen dollars and thirty cents.

Katherine, as was widely known in all corners of the universe, gave the best gifts on Earth. Each one personally tailored to a person’s personality, their interests, and what they could expand themselves to learn more about. She liked to pretend she put basically no thought into it-- she never wrapped them very carefully, sometimes just sticking them in a plastic bag and handing them over. But she did care, a lot, and she made sure what was inside beat every expectation anyone had.

And Davey… Davey gave her a run for her money.

Maybe it was the byproduct of living with an artist for six years, maybe it was just the fact that Davey, as a whole, was also an artistically gifted person. (Katherine refused to dignify the fact that Davey dropped out of Cal fucking Tech after three months to study production design. Yes, he was following his dream and actually doing very well and she was incredibly proud of him, but _still.)_

But either way, his gifts were thoughtful and gorgeous, and she was having to put more and more effort in each year in order to beat him.

Why did she need to beat him? Well, she needed to prove she could do anything and everything. She had the makings of a stable career, she had a great apartment, and she adored her girlfriend and friends. So as long as she kept Jack Kelly and his Big Fat Mouth out of her Christmas utopia, she’d be fine.

           

“I don’t know how on God’s green Earth you convinced me to do this,” Katherine hissed, and she could practically _feel_ Davey smiling over the phone.

“Don’t use the Lord’s name in vain, Kathy,” he parroted, and she groaned.

“The Lord’ll understand when I tell him about you.”

Davey laughed. “Who’ve I got?”

“Spot.”

She heard him pause to click his tongue and think. “Yeah, I can work with that.”

“Good, because I’m not redrawing.”

“Mhm. Who has me?”

“Six years and a _secret_ Santa is still a foreign concept to you?”

“Not Santa.”

“Fine. Anonymous gift exchange. Go shove a candy cane up your ass.”

“Why, _Miss Plumber--”_

She chose that moment to hang up.

She’d had one fucking job-- to not fall victim to Davey and his merciless pleading. And she had _failed._

 

Katherine reveled in her ability to basically rig the exchange however she pleased. Usually, she didn’t exercise her right, but giving to Sarah was absolutely crucial to her plan, so she gladly meddled.

The next step was to make sure that no one, ever-until-Christmas, found out.

That meant crowd control of the highest order.

 

It had taken an excruciatingly large amount of weekends just to figure out how to avoid Jack figuring out anything.

Davey, as his roommate, was recruited to keep him away from Macy’s.

Crutchie was enlisted to prevent Jack from figuring out any of the others, since despite Jack being a dumbass on an emotional level, he had surprisingly strong sleuthing skills.

Sarah also couldn’t know anything, which was increasingly difficult since she lived with Katherine, but no one could ever say that Katherine Plumber wasn’t one for a challenge.

On the Saturday that she finally succeeded, everything happened in quick succession-- Davey texting her that he and Jack were playing Monopoly, and therefore would be occupied for the next year; Sarah mentioning that she was grading a stack of essays, and Katherine rushing out the door to Macy’s.

 

Katherine considered herself a sensible person who could make educated decisions. However, she was also firmly dedicated to the holiday season, and therefore would make it through Macy’s at Christmas time if it killed her.

Luckily, it wasn’t New York. That might have killed her, but LA was… manageable, for someone with enough grit.

And if Katherine Plumber had anything, it was a surplus of grit.

 

“So,” Jack said, about a week before Christmas, “who’d you get?”

Katherine rolled her eyes. “Do you really think I’d tell you?”

“It was worth a try,” he said, shrugging, and then smiled lopsidedly. “Thanks for letting me back in, for real.”

She tried to push her smile down. Jack was annoying, and sometimes a dumbass, but damn it if she didn’t love him. “Yeah, well, your boyfriend’s a pest.”

“Davey isn’t my boyfriend,” he insisted, but he still paused afterwards and bit his bottom lip, smiling and looking down to his lap.

“He should be.”

“But he isn’t.”

“He would be if you got over yourselves.”

Jack didn’t even try to say that Davey wasn’t interested. Everyone on Earth, including the two of them, knew that they both had a chronic case of being Extraordinarily Into Each Other and Doing Nothing. It was annoying, truly-- Sarah and Katherine had gotten over their denial long ago, and Spot and Crutchie had a semi-functional relationship, but Davey and Jack kept dancing around the topic.

She understood, in a way. Both of them hated change, and so they dug their heels in, trying to keep life the way it was, even when Katherine reminded them that change could make their lives even better.

But Jack still smiled and played with the hem of his shirt, so Katherine knew she was getting closer to her goal.

She stood up from the table and dumped her trash in the mall garbage can next to them. “See you later, Jack.”

He looked back up and grinned at her. “No chance you’ll tell me who you got?”

“Not in a million years.”

Katherine got home from work to find Sarah laying face-first on their couch, a lukewarm cup of tea next to her.

“Babe?” she asked slowly, taking small steps forward just in case Sarah had been possessed. “You okay?”

There was a moment of silence, and finally Sarah groaned. “I’m done. And I’m staying here.”

Katherine immediately lit up, pushing her in the shoulder so that she flopped over and Katherine could see her face. “You’re done with the grading?”

Sarah nodded slowly, the grain of their couch cushions imprinted on her face. “So. Fucking. Tired.”

“Then sleep in bed, you goose.”

“Too tired to go to bed,” Sarah said, trying to lay back down before Katherine pushed her back up again.

“I’ll carry you,” she offered hopefully, and Sarah cast one disparaging look at Katherine’s shoulders.

“No, you won’t.”

“No, I won’t. Please? For me? For Christmas?”

“I don’t celebrate Christmas.”

“Yes, you do.”

“Yes, I do. If you turn on the TV I’ll let you have space on the couch.”

Katherine shoved down the grin that slipped onto her face, trying to not visibly capitalize on her victory. “I don’t know, Saz. I’ve got some editing to do…”

Sarah crinkled up her nose. “I’m better than editing.”

“And I’m better than finals, but that didn’t stop your grading coma.”

“I had a deadline.”

“So do I!”

Sarah smiled, and Katherine couldn’t help but smile back. “And how long will it take you to do this editing?”

“Hour, tops.”

“Then,” Sarah said, yanking on Katherine’s arm so that she fell down on top of her legs with a yelp, “watch a movie with me. Then edit.”

Katherine sighed melodramatically. “I _suppose.”_

Sarah laughed and wrapped her arms around Katherine’s waist, settling her chin on Katherine’s shoulder and Katherine grabbed the remote and they started their dive into the world of Christmas movies.

 

One thing Katherine hadn’t understood, for all the time she’d known Davey, was his insistence that despite Christmas being over-commercialized and depressing, _Love Actually_ was a fantastic movie.

It had ticked off a lot of the things that usually pissed Davey off about movies: extremely white cast, people being garbage to their partners, didn’t acknowledge any holiday other than Christmas. And yet, he watched it obsessively every December.

See, what she had made the mistake of doing was believing that Davey was a person with some semblance of self-respect and dignity.

However, even the most complex of mysteries could sometimes be solved with just the simplest of clues.

And so, Katherine listened carefully, always watching Davey out of the corner of her eye, trying to find a hint.

She had almost given up when Karl (the one who made out with Sarah, not Katherine’s Sarah, but _Love Actually_ Sarah? Yeah, him,) pulled off his shirt, and Davey coughed.

Her head whipped around, and Davey immediately looked down.

“This is why,” Katherine said quietly. “This is why you love this fucking movie.”

He didn’t say anything, and Katherine tilted her head back, staring at the ceiling and trying to work out in her head how she never figured it out before. “You have a _type.”_

“Technically,” Davey said, somewhat meekly, “I watch it for Colin Firth. This is just… a bonus.”

Katherine groaned. “You wouldn’t have to watch this if you just got together that with Jack.”

“No, then I just wouldn’t have to watch it for Karl. I still wouldn’t have a Colin Firth. Besides, I dislike the idea that Jack is anything like Karl.”

“I hate you.”

“Seriously! If I had to ditch him for Sarah or Les, he wouldn’t give up on me!”

“You’re pathetic.”

“I’m in love!”

“That makes it so, so much worse.”

Davey, very maturely, stuck his tongue out at her, and the conversation ended there.

And then, after a few minutes-- “Who’d you get for the gift excha--”

“No chance,” she said immediately, and he groaned.

“It doesn’t feel normal to have Jack in but not know who anyone has.”

“Yeah, well, look what happens when he keeps his damn mouth shut.”

Davey hummed. “Still doesn’t feel right. I thought for sure I’d at least know Crutchie by now.” He leaned back, putting his chin on his knees. “Thanks, though. For letting him back in.”

“Yeah, well, I realized that you’d probably stage a sit-in protest in my pantry, so.”

He coughed loudly to cover up his laugh, and Katherine looked at him out of the corner of her eye, wondering for a moment what her life would be like if he hadn’t nearly run her over at an antique auction. (He had an actual excuse for being there: searching for props for his current project at the time. She just wanted a quirky aesthetic.)

She wouldn’t have Sarah. She wouldn’t know Jack, or Spot, or Crutchie.

And God, she couldn’t even think of life without Sarah.

His sigh interrupted her train of thought, and she turned properly, curled up with her side pressing into the back of the couch so she could see the nervous creases between his eyebrows properly.

“What’s up, dickhead?”

He frowned at her. “God doesn’t like nosy people.”

She rolled her eyes. “One time, Davey.”

One corner of his mouth tipped up, ever so slightly. “It was funny, though.”

“Yeah, yeah.” She poked his side, and he furrowed his eyebrows at her. “What’s wrong?”

“I’m…” He closed his eyes and shook his head. “I broke the rules.”

“You broke my _sacred secrecy rules?”_ Her voice cracked on the last word, and he waved his hand. She exhaled slowly. “So not my rules. You have rules?”

“It wasn’t supposed to be… this bad,” he mumbled. “Jack.”

She settled deeper into the couch, pausing the movie. “What do you mean?”

“I wasn’t supposed to fucking… love him. Not like this. It messes things up.”

“Davey, being in love doesn’t mess it up, it just makes it more complicated.”

Davey squeezed his eyes shut, and Katherine could tell he was fighting tears. “I don’t want things to change.”

Katherine reached forward, pulling him into a hug. “You’re okay,” she said quietly, and he buried his face in her cardigan. “It’s alright, Dave.”

It was comforting, in a way. Davey was usually so much taller than her, but it was nice to no that no matter what, she was still able to take care of her best friend when she needed to.

“You need to tell him,” she said eventually. “You shouldn’t keep having to bottle it up ‘till it hurts.”

“I will,” he said, more to himself than her. “Some day.”

 

She was thoroughly convinced that Crutchie had been pregaming.

He had burst into her and Sarah’s apartment, asked her, “What’s crack-a-lackin’, Kathity-Kath?” and then proceeded to drop his wrapped gift on the table and head to the nearest snack platter.

Spot followed close behind, patting Katherine on the shoulder and setting his usual small envelope down on the table.

Davey and Jack showed up after a few minutes, both grinning widely, and Davey, visibly proud of himself, set his gift down on the table right before Jack did.

For what it was worth, (likely nothing,) it was incredibly clear that Jack had had his gift wrapped by one of the charity people at Barnes and Noble.

In less that five minutes, Davey had finished his first glass of wine, and was probably reciting the Communist Manifesto, his head in Jack’s lap. Spot and Crutchie were eyeing the nearby mistletoe, which Katherine knew meant she had to act fast.

“Hey, folks, gift time?”

Nothing perked up a bunch of twenty-somethings like the promise of presents.

They all knew the system, even Jack-- they circled around the table, holding the gift they had prepared, and proceeded in alphabetical order.

Spot went first, as always.

He handed his envelope to Crutchie. “Merry Christmas, babe.”

It took less that a second to reveal the… gift.

“A Bass Pro Shop gift card,” Crutchie said, not sounding the slightest bit surprised.

“With seventeen dollars and four cents on it,” Spot added, and Crutchie rolled his eyes, smiling nonetheless.

“And,” Spot added, with an air of great importance, “there’s another kinda gift in store for you, if you know what I mean.”

Everyone except the two in question groaned, and Spot held up his hands in surrender.

Sarah went next, handing her gift over to Jack and laughing as he took a deep breath, pulling the box of tissues Katherine kept on the dinner table towards him.

He gasped and jumped across the table to hug Sarah. “I told you I wanted these!”

Sarah laughed, and Katherine was hit with just how much she loved her.

Jack pulled back, already swiping at his eyes. “Shit, I’m saving the card. I love these paints so much, Sar, you have no clue.”

Katherine saw Davey smiling, not in the bright way he usually did, but warmly, in a way that softly crinkled the corners of his eyes. She wrinkled her nose at him, and he rolled his eyes.

Jack swiped at his eyes one last time and placed his hand on Davey’s wrist. “Dave?”

Davey snapped back into reality. “Yeah, fuck, shit.” He patted the top of his box gently. “Spot, this is for you.”

As soon as Spot started complaining that it was too pretty to unwrap, Katherine zoned out, trying to think inside her head about what on Earth she was going to say, and whether it would be right, and from there her brain was basically static until Jack sheepishly handed his present over to Davey, who was sitting directly to his right, and her life got far more interesting.

Davey grinned at him, and Jack’s smile grew hesitantly. Davey looked away to unwrap it, peeling away the tape carefully so he could save the wrapping paper. As soon as he reached the box, he stuck out his hand and Katherine immediately gave him a pair of scissors that he used to easily slice through the tape.

Katherine watched as he opened the flaps and his mouth fell open, just slightly.

“Oh, hell,” he said, his voice already watery.

She looked over to Jack, who was watching nervously, his lower lip wedged between his teeth. Davey lifted out a pack of paper, and Katherine leaned forward to be able to see.

“You made me stationary,” Davey said, his voice dangerously close to breaking. “Initials and everything.”

“Hand pressed,” Jack added quietly, and even Spot and Crutchie had somehow been brought to silence. “Y’know, for all your nerdy purposes.”

Davey rubbed at the edges of his eyes, where tears were forming. “Shit, there’s more. Jack, you really didn’t need to do this much.”

“But I kinda did,” Jack said, and all of a sudden Katherine felt like she needed to look away, like she was intruding on something private and sacred that she shouldn’t have been allowed to see.

Davey pulled out a layer of tissue paper and immediately buried his head in his hands, and Katherine pushed her chair back so she could stand up and see.

It was a blanket. She was so thoroughly confused as to why Davey cried at the things he did.

Jack blinked, shocked, and reached a tentative hand out to Davey, who just grabbed it and held it tight as he choked out little sobs.

Later, Katherine would find out that it was the same blanket that Davey had, months ago, ran his hands over for a half an hour in the store, marveling at how soft it was, and that Jack had bought it that very day.

She didn’t understand it, for a while, the way that simplicity made up Davey and Jack’s life, it sheltered them from the world, and it comforted them as things changed.

But what she did understand was that Davey, quickly, leaned forward to kiss Jack, and when he tried to pull away to apologize, Jack cupped his hands around his face and pulled him back in before he could get out a single word.

Katherine, frozen, looked over to Sarah, who had her hands over Crutchie and Spot’s mouths. They all stayed perfectly still until, after a second, Jack pulled away, both of them blinking rapidly and clutching at each other.

Then Davey seemed to notice Katherine out of the corner of his eye and immediately went red. “Sorry,” he muttered, and Jack managed a guilty laugh before Katherine groaned.

“Oh, go talk,” she said, shooing them out.

There was a few moments of silence, and eventually Crutchie coughed. “Uh, Kath, you want a present?”

She rubbed her temples, taking a deep breath, and smiling despite it because of how much the people around her deserved to be happy. “Yes, please.”

Of course Crutchie, in all his weird glory, managed to get his hands on a pink typewriter for her. After a few minutes of him showing her different keys and how to insert paper, all that was left was the moment that months had been building up to for Katherine.

She pushed her tupperware over to Sarah, and Sarah frowned, confused. “A tupperware?”

“Look inside,” she said, and Sarah furrowed her eyebrows at Katherine’s nervous expression. Sarah pried the top off and carefully peeled away strips of pink tissue paper.

There was a moment of silence, when the paper was gone and there was only one little thing left in the container.

“Oh,” Sarah said quietly, and looked up slowly, where Katherine was standing, little diamonds of tears forming in her eyes.

In the container, actual diamonds formed a small little cluster against sterling silver, with a larger white sapphire in the middle.

“Holy shit,” Crutchie said, having waited far too long to say something to ruin a mood.

It seemed to kickstart Sarah’s brain, though.

“Oh my god,” she said, her hand flying up to cover a massive smile. “Holy shit, Kathy, is--”

Katherine cracked a smile. “Wanna get married?”

Sarah shrieked out a laugh and threw herself partway over the table, throwing her arms around what little of Katherine she could get to.

Loud “yes”s and joyful laughter blended together, and Katherine blinked away tears as Crutchie whooped loudly and Spot complained that he hadn’t signed up for an emotional experience.

Katherine freed one of her hands to flip him off, and then grabbed the collar of Sarah’s shirt to pull her in for a kiss.

 

**Actual Future Katherine Jacobs:** _hi_

**Davey:** _EXCUSE ME WHAT_

**Author's Note:**

> anywho. hope u enjoyed that!!!!!! i might write a follow-up with their wedding but please Don't Count On That i'm a busy gal and i have other projects on my plate rn!!!!!  
> please leave me a comment and rb the post on tumblr if you liked this, it really helps me out and it makes my day!  
> 2018 is almost over, so on to 2019!!!! i hope you all have a joyful new year that's full of beautiful moments and happy days <3


End file.
